Issue #200 approaches, which is pretty exciting! Just
thought I'd let you know I'm working on updating the free
text archives zip download files in case you've missed any
of the last 200 issues.

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Encyclopedia that'll soon be available for purchase. The
gazillion tips from 200 issues will be split up, sorted,
categorized, and organized so you can find the advice you
need fast or do topic oriented research for your games. Stay
tuned for more info!

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Stalling well is part art and part science. It's a valuable
GM tool that helps you manage pacing, unexpected turns of
events, and various session management issues. Plus,
sometimes you just get stumped and need to buy some time
until inspiration hits. Following is a bit of analysis of
stalling and some tangible techniques you can use when in a
jam.

Why Do You Need To Stall?

Once you realize you need to buy some time, draw in some
deep, calming breaths, take a mental step backwards, and ask
yourself why you need to stall. Pinpointing the problem
helps ensure that the solution you choose is going to be
relevant and effective.

For example, the party takes an unexpected turn into
unplanned territory. You panic and unleash a random
encounter. Random encounters aren't intrinsically good or
bad, but in this case, the remedy might not be appropriate
because you'll soon be stuck once again after the encounter
is over.

So, during sessions, why would you need to stall? If you
pare things down to their essence, you need to stall because
something is not ready:

The GM's Not Ready

You didn't have time to finish planning

You can't think of what to do next

The characters make an unexpected turn

You need more time to think

The pacing is too fast

You want to hold off on something for effect

The Players Aren't Ready

Someone's away from the table

A player's late

An important player can't make it for the session

The group's mood is wrong at the moment

The PCs Aren't Ready

They're too wounded for what's coming next

They're not depleted enough to be challenged by what's
coming next

They don't have enough clues or information yet

They're not tough or capable enough yet

They don't have the necessary equipment or special items

A PC has died and the replacement isn't finished being
made yet

The Adventure's Not Ready

More story needs telling

More background information needs revealing so things will
make sense or be more entertaining

You don't want to deploy a planned encounter just yet

Re-enforcements are coming and you need to buy time or
keep the foes alive just a little longer

The Campaign's Not Ready

You need to do more world development

You haven't fully decided on consequences to various PC
actions

The world is revolving too much around the PCs again

Much game time has passed suddenly and you need to
evaluate

It's important to know why you need to stall so that you can
slant the solution accordingly. What's not ready? The GM,
players, characters, adventure, or campaign?

Analyzing the example from the top of the tip, if the PCs
have ventured into unplanned territory then it's the GM and
the campaign that aren't ready. So, a random encounter could
become a viable solution if it's used to buy some time (so
the GM can do some quick planning) or guide the PCs in
different direction (until the campaign region is ready).

Another key piece of analysis is to calculate how long you
need to stall for. If you stall too long, game play might
suffer. If you don't stall long enough, you'll have to come
up with another stall tactic where just one would have
sufficed.

Here are three handy time categories to help you quickly
assess stall length:

Session Stall
You need to put something off for a whole session.
Perhaps a key player had to cancel at the last minute, or
you didn't finish planning out the adventure and it's not
ready. Session stalls are easy to do in that you don't
have to worry about complex story weaving or session
management because they're open-ended--your goal is to
get the PCs on a temporary new path until the end of the
session.

On the other hand, these stalls are difficult in that you
need a body of game material that's enough to keep things
going for the rest of the session.

Encounter Stall
At the encounter level, your goal here is to delay or
re-order a planned encounter until the proper time or
situation arises. You either have to uproot an encounter
or delay initiating it.

Round Stall
At the turn-by-turn character decision and action level
you need to stall for a bit of tactical time. Depending
on your game system, this level occurs in combat rounds,
phases, turns, etc.

Unless you need to actually stop or pause the game, it's
probably not worth the effort to guesstimate how long in
real time you need to delay things because everything
ultimately gets translated into an in-game unit of round(s),
encounter(s), or session(s).

Also, due to the interactive nature of our hobby :) you
can't control to a precise degree how long players and their
characters will take for their actions, discussions, and
plans.

What are you stalling for? What are you aiming to hook-up
with once the stall is done? Keeping the end goal in mind
will help you tweak game play accordingly so you can
gracefully resume standard game play without breaking
stride.

For the most part, we can boil stalls down into three core
types:

Time Stall
More game play or campaign calendar time must elapse
before you can continue on with regular game play.
Perhaps the PCs need to heal up or gain more experience,
or maybe you want to wait for a seasonal festival to
begin so the next chapter of the story can unfold.

Another type of time stall is a real-time stall. Here,
you need to pause or stop the game, or you need to vacate
the GM chair for a bit while you think, plan, or design.

Location Stall
In this case, you're not concerned about a time factor
but with a specific location in the campaign area. You
want to prevent the PCs from entering this location until
certain requirements are met, such as key plot points,
special items, specific NPCs encountered, and so on. Once
everything is in place you can then make the location
accessible again.

Event Stall
Here, you want to prevent an event from triggering until
the moment is right because the campaign, the PCs, or you
aren't ready for the consequences of the event. The
location and time don't necessarily matter either.
Perhaps the PCs have mishandled a diplomatic encounter
and a war could be triggered--but you want to avoid that
war until you have time to detail the armies and key
NPCs. Another example might be a theft encounter you had
designed, but the characters neglected to find the item
you had planned on stealing.

Knowing what you're stalling for and how the game should
resume after the stall is important. This knowledge lets you
make those tiny on-the-fly GMing tweaks to help the game
resume its normal course without headaches.

Stalling well involves assessing many variables that will be
unique and time-sensitive to your campaigns. Some specific
techniques are discussed in the next few tips, but it might
be of value looking at stalling methods from a theoretical
standpoint to help arm you with a framework that you can
flesh out as suits your own campaigns' needs.

Interpose An Obstacle
You put in place something that blocks or hinders the PCs'
progress, thus buying you a little time. Some examples are:

Adding a tough lock or key puzzle to a door. While the PCs
figure out how to open the portal you can do some extra
planning or decide what's behind the door.

Rolling up a random road encounter. This obstacle can slow
the PCs down in several ways, such as making them more
cautious, wounding them, or taking up session time to
resolve a battle.

Create A Distraction
You throw the PCs off the scent or divert them until you're
ready to proceed with regular game play.

Just as the PCs are about to climb through the Baron's
window you distract them with a nearby noise. If the PCs
investigate and the noise turns up nothing, you've created
a short distraction. If the noise was caused by some
lurking thugs, then you've created a longer distraction.

As a discussion comes to a close, you can see the party is
about to decide to do something you hadn't planned for.
So, you decide to have an NPC bearing an irresistible plot
hook concerning shiny treasure knock on the door...

Use Misdirection
A little misdirection can cause the party to hesitate,
choose another path, or delay. This is a great type of stall
because it often fits in seamlessly with game play and the
players will think you planned the trick all along.

The PCs have made faster progress than you anticipated and
are just about to reach the village. You haven't finished
planning all the events that are to take place in the
village though, so you decide to place a similar village
in their path that's just a mile down-road. You plan on
delaying them with a bar fight and a couple of NPC side
plots until they party figures out they're in the wrong
place.

The players decide they'll visit the crematorium next in
their investigation, but you don't want that location
triggered just yet because the necromancer player couldn't
make the session. So, when the PCs ask for directions, you
have an NPC mistakenly send them to the wrong building where
other encounters occur.

Replace
You secretly take your plans and notes, neatly bundle them
up, and put them back into your GM binder. You reach for a
module, another encounter, or Plan B and use that instead,
saving your other designs for a better time.

Two players called in sick but the game must go on. You
decide to pause the game for 10 minutes to do some planning
and then come up with a dream adventure for the three
remaining PCs.

The plan was for the PCs to discover the prophecy scroll
and then head out on the road. However, the party missed
finding the scroll, so you decide to run a different
adventure on-the-fly using the latest book you're reading
for story line, encounter, and NPC ideas.

At the turn-by-turn, combat round, or action sequence level,
you can delay neatly by starting encounters off at the edge
of the PCs' long range senses. While the PCs prepare,
discuss tactics, and use all the means at their disposal to
clarify what's happening, you buy time to think, plan, or
wait for the player in the bathroom to return.

Example:

Line of site. You can see pretty far on flat, open terrain
in daylight. Long range vision encounter distance is great
because most details will be too small to clearly see and so
cause lots of PC activity, questions, and suspense.

Visions. Give one or more PCs a vivid dream or strange
vision about what's coming up. This requires a little
advance recognition for the need to stall, but works well.
You'll need to give the PCs clues though that the situation
they're currently in is the same as their visions so they
can react.

6th sense. This work well for any game, even non-spiritual
genres or game systems without spiritual oriented PC
statistics. You can just let one or more players know that
their characters have a hunch or feeling that something's
about to happen. Perhaps they feel like they're being
watched, or the hair rises on the back of their necks.

Hearing. Noises can travel far under certain conditions.
Even better, the source of a noise doesn't have to reveal
itself nor give its exact location way, which gives you more
stall time to play with.

Knowledge. Clues, information, and character skills can
alert the party before a threat enters close range. For
example, a silent forest might warn the woodsman, or the
strange burn marks might tip off the wizard.

Side plots are great stalling devices because they can be
inserted at almost any time during a game and resolve
themselves right away (for a short stall), take a little
time (long stall), or be open-ended (variable length stall
that you can exit and resume again when desired).

For example, the PCs have just crushed the villain's chief
lieutenant and are on the trail of the villain himself.
Problem is, the campaign needs the villain alive a little
longer and you haven't fully fleshed out the NPC's stats for
combat. Just as the PCs are about to catch up to him they
spot their employer being mugged in an alley. Initiative is
rolled and during the fray one of the thugs manages to pull
the employer through a secret door. A PC hears his boss
pleading just before the door closes, "Please, I'll tell you
all I know about his secret lair if you just let me go..."

Delaying PC progress with a trap or puzzle is a good way to
stall. The best delays of this type should involve doors,
gates, and portals. Passageway, tunnel, road, and path traps
and puzzles often seem out of place if none have been
encountered before in the region, not to mention dangerous
if the area is travelled frequently by others. However, it's
always easy to fit in a door, fence, hedgerow, gate, and
such, on-the-fly to make the party pause. So, keep a few
generic access type puzzles handy, just in case.

Sow a little party dissension and stir up some PC-to-PC
roleplaying to launch side plots, short discussions, or
player initiated encounters. Make the situation fairly
innocuous though as you don't want to forge deep rifts that
might derail an adventure or campaign.

Some examples:

Secrets. Give each character a secret that the other PCs
would find very interesting. The best secrets for the
purposes of stalling are ones that get revealed or are in
danger of being revealed and cause suspicion. Note that the
secrets don't need to be serious or damaging--it's just the
process of discovery and investigation you're wanting to
spawn in order to delay things.

Identity. Put a PC's identity in question. The other
players will want to spend time on verification, which
should cause some good roleplaying. Dopplegangers (real or
imagined) are a great fantasy stalling tool.

Mind control. Similar to identity, putting a PCs' mental
control in question can cause fairly benign intra party
conflicts. Psionics, telepathy, charm, and such are typical
devices.

Note passing. Frequent note-trading between a player and
GM is sure to raise eyebrows, if not suspicion.

Alliances. PC alliances (with other party members or NPCs)
can cause great conflicts. Conflicts between employers,
mentors, and masters can also trickle down to the party
level and create some interesting points of discussion and
game delaying opposing actions.

Conflicting goals. Give each player a different goal or
motive for using an artefact that has one charge left and
then throw them a fake version when you need to stall.

Low powered treasure piles with lots of items. Give the
PCs 11 different potions as a reward, for example, and
they'll spend at least five minutes discussing how to divide
them up. (Note: the potions would have to be labelled or
identified somehow, otherwise there would be little worth
discussing.)

Use Card Envelopes Until Magic Items Are Identified
From: John Gallagher

I've always used 3x5 cards for magic items in my campaign.
On the card, across the top, I write the name of the item,
and (more importantly) where it was found, i.e. name of the
adventure, room or encounter number, and also, the number of
charges, if applicable.

Next comes the rulebook description of the item.

The cards help eliminate a lot of questions about whether or
not the party ever used that potion of giant strength or
not. Once they use it, I rip up the card. So, if they don't
have a card for it, guess what? They can't use it.

Another nifty add-on to this system is that, anytime the
players find an item that they think is magical, I hand them
the card for the item in its own little envelope. They hold
on to the envelope until they have the item identified, or
until they start experimenting with it.

I read them a description of the item, and they can make
whatever notes they want right on the envelope. Once they
identify the item, they can take it out of the envelope and
use it. But, as often happens, if they wait 3 or 4 weeks to
ID it, I don't have to go scrambling back through my notes
for it. They simply hand me back the envelope, and say "we
want this ID'd." Once it's done, I don't have to look up the
item, I just open the envelope and look at the card.

I am a member of the Strolen's Citadel at strolen.com and
still a beginning DM. Your weekly advice often helps me or
inspires me to new ideas, and much of my game world would
look worse without it.

Your last tips interested me quite a lot, because I too run
a one-player campaign. Please allow me to add/expand to
some of your ideas a little:

Companions
In regards to animal companions, they often come from a
character's background and are emotionally close to him or
her. Give the character a companion and give the companion
character. It must be named and have quirk or two (I still
remember a pony, trusty and obedient, just with those little
smelly digestive problems...).

Animals have keen senses and so are useful for DMs. Animals
can be on guard instead of the character. What's more, even
if you fail with a description, you can easily convey
emotions and foreshadow important events/monsters/NPCs with
companions. Lone characters are much more attentive to this!
Companions can be threatened as well, but never harm a
companion just for a bit of drama!

Combat
In combat, special care should be given to what I call
'blind monsters.

Blind monsters may or may not be initially hostile to the
PC, but once they are, they have no reason to stop fighting.
These monsters are extremely hard to parley with, appease,
or scare away. Typical examples are lower undead and
insectoids, though certain aggressive flesh-eaters and man-
eaters may fall into this category as well in the form of
sick or crazed animals and mad characters.

Lesson: when using blind monsters, have some other being at
hand that could theoretically save a wounded character. Even
orcs may be good for this purpose. You can make the saving
some kind of mystery, but not every time. Give extra care to
monsters able to kill with one special attack!

Be Prepared To Drop The Rules
Playing with one player way is simply different and the
rules tend to get simplified over time--up to the point of
dropping most rules in many cases, agreement being reached
through talking, not rolling. Roll for things that are
important on the larger scale or where you just want to
decide randomly.

Another tip about equipment. Players love stuff. Big shiny
piles of stuff. Mysterious unopened boxes, piles of
treasure, or just dusty, forgotten things in the backs of
old storerooms.

Stuff is good.

You can easily get an entire (and entirely enjoyable)
session out of handing players a huuuge list describing an
inventory made available to them by a patron - and then just
go round, combat-rounds style, asking the PCs which box they
each want to investigate or take with them.

Make sure they can't carry everything with them, throw in a
little time pressure, and you end up with the most
astoundingly strange decision-making process ever. "It MUST
be magical - it came in a funny box!"

Of similar amusement is the "Emergency, throw everything you
don't need overboard or you are going to sink/drop out of
the sky" cliche. Then, later on in the game, they berate
themselves for throwing away something that would have been
really useful. Oddly, they seem to come up with more plans
involving equipment they no longer have than they do when
they still have the equipment available. Funnier ones too.

Anyway - Stuff. Stuff is good. Give the players a huge
list of stuff, as a printed list or on index cards, and
watch them play with it.

In single player games there's no need to balance things
between players, so the rules can be bent to make the PC
more powerful than he/she would normally be. This provides
better role-playing opportunities, and also makes a lone
character more viable in a game system that's designed for a
large party of people who specialize in different fields.

For example, in a class-based system, a new unique class
could be created for the PC that combines the abilities of
several different classes without needing to have additional
drawbacks added for balancing purposes. This class could
provide all the combat abilities of a warrior but also
provide spellcasting powers and expertise in a wide range of
skills. The PC might be much more powerful than a character
with a normal class, but as there is only one player, it's
less likely to cause problems.

In addition, equipment that would normally be overpowered
can be granted to the PC to compensate for weaknesses.
Especially helpful are powers or items that increase the
PC's defensive capabilities and provide methods of escape.

In one solo campaign I ran, for example, the PC had an
intelligent sword with the ability to teleport him away from
danger a limited number of times and instantly heal all of
his wounds once per day. (This would take effect if the PC
suffered a mortal wound; the PC would be healed, but would
often accept partial defeat and leave until he regained his
safety net.) The sword also served as a humorous commentator
and provided suggestions when the PC was out of ideas.